The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. Our mission is to make application security visible, so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about true application security risks. Everyone is free to participate in OWASP and all of our materials are available under a free and open software license.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Board decision on the NYC RFP

OWASP Community,

Yesterday
your elected board decided not to have OWASP support an RFP to build a
cybersecurity center of excellence in NYC. The local NYC OWASP
community did an awesome job working to meet the RFP requirements and
assembling a team and a detailed proposal.

The team presented the submission generally during the past OWASP BOD call February 7thand in all details during the executive meeting afterwards.

We decided (unanimously) not to support the proposal at an organizational level for a couple of very basic reasons:

The activities would be geographically focused in NYC. As a global entity, we should prioritize activities with a global interest.

The activities potentially involve a commercial interest which we feel can introduce a conflict of interest to our mission.

The foundation has substantial commitments and existing priorities with AppSec conferences, Projects and Chapters, which are already stressing our existing resources.

We
believe both the RFP process and further work around this initiative
would be a significant amount of work for the Foundation staff, which
could introduce risk to the core mission of OWASP.

With
decisions that involve large amounts of effort, money and direction we
expect people to have strong opinions and ideas. We feel an acute
responsibility as your elected board to work to make the best decisions
we can for the global OWASP community - to direct our activities and
funds toward our mission, which is an open global application security
community. We deeply appreciate everyone’s contributions.